Redesigned Mozilla Website Launching Soon

Thursday October 30th, 2003

Bart Decrem writes: "Thanks to the hard work by Dave Shea, Tristan [Nitot], and, especially for the long last mile, Ben [Goodger], Dawn [Endico], DBaron [David Baron] and Chofmann [Chris Hofmann], we're almost ready to launch the redesigned Mozilla web site, so now's a great time to head over to http://website-beta.mozilla.org/, check out the new site and send feedback to webmaster@mozilla.org."

Update: One of the names that originally appeared in this article has been removed, at that person's own request.

I think it'd be best if it's made clear that the birds are based on mozilla. New users probably don't know why there'd be a suite and separate apps, and thus think they shouldn't get the standalones, especially due to the low version numbers.

I don't think new users should get the *birds until they are 1.x products. Sending new users to development builds that may or may not cause instabilities/problems is just the right recipe for alienating potential Mozilla supporters.

Then why are they converting Firebird's icon to something featuring a large, ugly 'F' when it will soon be called "Mozilla Browser." The flaming bird and icy bird icons were the coolest for the *bird's, IMO. That F hovering on the globe is fugly.

The icons for all the components should have the same theme... consistency!

If you switch to the largefonts stylesheet, then back to the default stylesheet, the line spacing does not get reset, so the page does not look like it did before with the default stylesheet. I don't know if this is an issue with the page or my browser (Mozilla Firebird 0.7); maybe it's even a known issue that's been addressed. But it's not right, it's immoral, and it's letting the terrorists win. Other than that, I declare the page has much nift.

Now for a slightly off-topic rant:
One of the main reasons for the website changes etc. is to focus on pushing mozilla to end users, correct? Then why are we pushing Mozilla 1.5, a development snapshot release, to the end users??? why are we not focusing on Mozilla 1.4, the long lived stable branch? why is there nothing that tells them about Mozilla 1.4 or why they might want it, rather then 1.5, on the new site or the old site... WTF?

Just to pick up one of your points, most of the current roadmap is out of date (the release schedule part has been updated, but the bit about switching to Firebird and stuff was written in April and is a bit useless). Don't want too many new people stumbling upon an outdated roadmap document.

Don't think the revision date needs to be that prominent - it is shown at the bottom, along with a link to the revision history. The last changed date comes from CVS and may indicate that someone fixed a small typo, or that they rewrote the whole document - it's not that useful in itself.

1.6a is a development snapshot release. 1.5 is (theoretically) a stable release. The stability of the 1.4 branch is API stability (of interest to embeddors and developers and of sublime indifference to end users), not necessarily stability in the sense of "not crashing".

maybe we should wait and see how stable a release is before deciding to move it "above" the previous release and push it hard. There will still be plenty of users eager to try out the new version, even if we don't say "latest and greatest stable version".

Now 1.5 seems less stable (in the sense of not crashing) than 1.4 -- which matters to new users. So maybe we'd be better pointing them at 1.4.1 (like we used to with 1.0.x), and pointing the adventurous at 1.5?

I assume you know how the release cycle for "final" releases works? That long off-trunk baking period is to see how stable the release is and fix issues with stability before declaring it stable.... Now sometimes, that fails. But the relative stability of 1.5 and 1.4 is very much questionable; in my experience (except on Mac OSX 10.1.5) 1.5 is more stable (though it would be interesting to see talkback data to get a more objective comparison).

Agreed bzbarsky, Mozilla 1.1, 1.2.1, and 1.3.1 where all quite stable compared to the stable trunks (1.0, 1.4) but one of the points I was trying to make is the API incompatibilities between the versons.

If we tell everyone to develop using the stable branch, mozilla 1.4, then what do we tell the end users when they find out that the Plug-in, Add-on, Theme, etc. they want to use is incompatible with mozilla 1.5/1.6?

Now for a slightly off-topic rant:
One of the main reasons for the website changes etc. is to focus on pushing mozilla to end users, correct? Then why are we pushing Mozilla 1.5, a development snapshot release, to the end users??? why are we not focusing on Mozilla 1.4, the long lived stable branch? why is there nothing that tells them about Mozilla 1.4 or why they might want it, rather then 1.5, on the new site or the old site... WTF?

I wasn't going to say anything about the lack of commonality of the Firebird and Thunderbird icons. The little Bugzilla icon looked a bit funny, but still, I wasn't motivated enough to post.

But then... I saw THIS page: http://website-beta.mozilla.org/support/

You CAN'T be serious. image: http://website-beta.mozilla.org/images/support.png I don't want to insult somebody's work, but honestly, just leaving blank space there would be a huge improvement.
<p>
Also, I think the Bug (in the large image) http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/ could use an attitude adjustment. It looks like he's either rolling his eyes (*sigh* "This whole thing is hopeless.") or looking straight up ("God, help me. God, I hate this.") The Bug is okay, but he should have a positive expression like Tux's, IMHO. Just moving the iris of the eye down some might be enough to fix it. A slight smile would be a nice touch.

Why has the the new Mozilla website been written with fully W3C compliant HTML 4.01 Strict code? It looks
rubbish in Netscape 4.x. Yes, I know Netscape 4.x is a technically web obsolete browser, and doesn't properly
recognise currently recommended web standards, but aren't we supposed to be persuading users of such old
web browsers to upgrade to Mozilla? If the Mozilla website only looks good in modern browsers like Mozilla
surely that's just "preaching to the choir"? If your average Netscape 4.x user is persuaded to try Mozilla, goes
to Mozilla.org, and sees that the website looks crap in his/her browser, that will reflect badly on Mozilla as a
whole. He/she will undoubtedly think, "If the Mozilla site looks crap, then the Mozilla web browser is there-
fore be crap as well." That person will decide to stick with his/her obsolete Netscape 4.x browser, (or worse,
switches to IE) then Mozilla ends up losing a potential new user, and might go and tell all of his/her friends
that (in his/her opinion) Mozilla is crap. Although Mozilla (and all the browsers built upon it) are the most
standards compliant browsers around, for these reasons, the Mozilla site shouldn't be standards compliant.

With Mozilla usage already significantly above Netscape 4.x (~5% vs ~2% on most sites and on Google stats), NN 4.x users are *not* the way forward (they won't change under any circumstances anyhow as anybody left on that browser is held on it either corporate or university IT support, or by complete unwillingness to install any new software).

Ass-backward design from the 1990s is also, self-evidently, *not* the way forward.

If we want Mozilla browsers to lead the way then we should damn well have a website that does the same..

On the other hand, the web site certainly does need to work in IE6, which is where 60%+ of potential Mozilla users are coming from. I assume it does.

I don't see any problems in IE6. It doesn't look the exact same, but there are no problems, and that is what would trow someone off. The beta site, though slightly different, degrades nicely in IE6SP1.

If you are using netscape 4 and you don't want to upgrade that is entirely your problem. It was an obsolete product when mozilla development started. That was a few years before the end of last century.

The average netscape 4 user (imho an endangered species) probably has no choice in browsers (platform/hardware limitations), otherwise he/she would be running something else. In the exceptional case that they do have a choice, I can think of no better motivation than almost any website looking like shit on their screen.

Have you tried using NS4 recently? The /entire web/ looks crap as far as I can tell. So your example users friends will be pretty bored of them moaning about poor websites.

Moreover, there is the concept of "eating your own dogfood". If mozilla.org, as the vendor of (one of) the world's most standards compliant browsers, aren't prepared to get behind 21st century webdesign, then who will? It's a bit hard to go around telling people to upgrade their site from IE/NS4 proprietry crap when your own site is full of hacks to maintain appearance in one of the worst browsers ever released. The trend toward standards compliance in web design is only a good thing for Mozilla; peturbing that trend could be much worse than loosing the odd diehard Netscape 4 user.

If this is important, then instead of changing the whole website, how about we just put in a small browser detect script that will redirect old browsers to a small, separate page where they can download Mozilla?

It sucks that the pages haven't authored properly to work with Mozilla! Everytime I open one of these pages, I get a select user dialog with a dozen entries all with the same username! The only thing different is the "Title" field of the reply/comment form. Why I would want title associated with my user name and password I don't know (ignoring the fact that most of the titles of used on previous comments are probably irrelevant to the one I'm currently writing.)

"It sucks that the pages haven't authored properly to work with Mozilla! Everytime I open one of these pages, I get a select user dialog with a dozen entries all with the same username! The only thing different is the 'Title' field of the reply/comment form."

That's Password Manager that sucks, not this site (well, we do suck but in entirely different ways). Password Manager works great with forms that only have login and password fields and other fields where the user will always enter the same information. When one of those fields has varying data, Password Manager thinks its a separate login. This then exposes Password Manager's less-than-ideal method of dealing with multiple logins for one site.

I worked around this problem by first removing all the Mozillazine entries from the password manager, then making one post with my login/password and the title "Reply", and then posting and saving the password. After this, I never change the title whenever I post here so that it keeps the same entry - which is why all of my posts have "Reply" as the topic which you can see if you look at this post.

The website-beta goes overboard with the title attribute. On the home page, "about us" has "Getting the most out of your online experience", "search mozilla.org:" has "search mozilla.org"[sic]s sites". On the products page, each product has a redundant title attribute. The content names are descriptive enough, and superfluous use of the title attribute will only hassle disabled users.

I agree though that utterly redundant title attributes just waste bandwidth and show tooltips that might cause some raised eyebrows. I am all for providing *additional* help and info where possible but the examples given are really ridiculous.

Some text browsers have a feature to list links. They use the title attribute instead of the link text (if the title attribute is present). So the title attribute of a link should make more sense out of context than the link text. The title attributes mentioned in the grandparent post do not violate this rule.

jesse:
"The title attributes mentioned in the grandparent post do not violate this rule."

To learn about the Mozilla Foundation, would a user better understand "about us" or "Getting the most out of your online experience"? Does "search mozilla.org"[sic]s sites" make more sense than "search mozilla.org:"? On the products page, the title attribute for "Mozilla 1.5" is "Mozilla 1.5", "Mozilla Firebird", "Firebird"; "Mozilla Thunderbird", Thunderbird"; "Camino", "Camino". This is redundant.

What about following web standards on the page? As it is now, it's misusing "DL" elements (and its children "DT" and "DD"). Those are for _definition lists_ (terms and their definitons), not for creating indented text. Mozilla is about web standards, right?

According to the W3C spec, DL is not just for definitions: "Another application of DL, for example, is for marking up dialogues, with each DT naming a speaker, and each DD containing his or her words." Any list of short headings paired with longer texts is a perfectly semantic use of the DL element.

As posted previously in the Mozilla marketing mailing list, it seems Microsoft is already working in a specification for defining XML based user interfaces. That won't mean anything but competition for XUL and other technologies involved in XPFE.

So I think, the website must emphasize, in the developer section, the tools and documentation available for creating apps on XPFE.
There should be two clear section: one for Mozilla developers (programmers of the browsers and mail clients) and another for Mozilla technologies developers, interested in XUL. There should be a reference to http://books.mozdev.org, to XULplanet and other resources. However, the best shot would be to have all these resources available directly from mozilla.org. I think this would increase developer's confidence and trust that there is a strong backing for it. Of course, links to third party resources complement the image, but mozilla.org MUST be the core.

If there is going to be a press release when the new site is released (which, in fact, should happen), it would be a plus to be able to invite developers to visit XUL site where they could easily find all the resources they may need to start creating their own XUL apps.

I find it is hard to find the link to more information on Mozilla 1.5
The only link is a small icon, to one of the sides. Not even the text "Mozilla 1.5" takes you to that page.
In the information page, I would include a "Download" link at the bottom of the page, not just at the left column. Same with the other proyects.

Other than that, I love it. Oh, and I do like that bugzilla icon, it's the best one. :D

Oh, on the support site I think too much emphasis is done on the phone support. I would give it equal treatment to the other support options, specially considering it's not thought for end-users.

Anyway.... I really like it. It is a HUGE improvement over the previouss (current) site. Congratulations on those who are working on it.

*I second that this forum requires a preview - accidentally hit <Enter> before posting* ;)

Overall I am starting to like the redesign - it's clean and direct - even though I still feel the Mozilla brand needs some serious work. The purple colours used in the header bars and LH column headings seem to have appeared out of nowhere, and IMHO don't complement with the gold/red/brown colours of the existing site (brand?) at all.

My biggest concern however is that the navigation througout the site isn't very clear - there is a general lack of consistency with where information is displayed across pages and how this information is accessed.

The primary navigation (not in the most obvious position on the screen) I assume are the links in the top-right corner, and the secondary nav is in the LH column which is used for a completely different purpose on the homepage - ie. as a "what's new", etc. panel. To further illustrate this visit the Mozilla 1.5 homepage - http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/ - the layout of the 'secondary nav' on this page in the LH column is completely different to the secondary nav on other pages.

Also I dislike the way elements shift around between pages - take a look at the Mozilla 1.5 homepage and then the Mozilla 1.5 download page - http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/download/ - "Get the Mozilla CD" and "Requirements" have now relocated out of the LH column, which is just confusing.

As mcbridematt has already touched on, there are major inconsistencies with the page titles. The homepage title is "mozilla - blah blah" yet further into the site it loses the "mozilla -" and just adopts a unique title for that page, which for bookmarking purposes is bad considering users won't know what "The Camino™ Project" was if they saw it in their bookmarks. By simply attaching 'mozilla -' to the title would already make it more clear.
Also, the primary navigation homepages (ie. "* Download * Products * Support * Developers * About Us") are all differently structured: Download's title is "Mozilla Products", as is the title for Products; Support's title is "mozilla - Mozilla Support", Developers title is "mozilla - Develop Central" and About Us title is "About Mozilla". The title for the footer link page, Donate, is "Support Mozilla!" which clashes with the Support page - it should be "Donate" instead, or a synonym that implies users supporting, not support for users. And the Contact footer link title is "Mozilla - Contact us". etc.... you get the picture.

Best of luck with the new site, to all involved. Hopefully the issues mentioned above can be easily fixed to provide Mozilla(mozilla? MozIllA? ;) with a more professional and accurate representation of the world's best browser.

Looking at the site in a text browser, the first thing that appears is "mozilla logo" (the alt text for the mozilla image). The alt text should be an alternative to the text, not a description of the image - "mozilla" would be better.

Hopefully someone will go through the comments posted here and fix a few things up changes. And it is a website, not a paper document - little things can (and will) be fixed up after the site goes live.

Not on the same topic, but... On the support page on the new site there are links to MozillaZine forums. MozillaZine now has some new forums specifically for user support, but the support page links to the general discussion forums, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

I agree with the critique by coda as well; the layout is incosositent but nice. Also I still think the mozilla.org logo on the topleft should be transparent with the horizontal or vertical bar behind it because it makes the page look less disjointed.

I really hate the new beta page format. I go to Mozilla.org to find out what's up with Mozilla, and the new page seems to be just an ad for Mozilla 1.5. The current page design gives me lots more information immediately. I visit the current (and previous) Mozilla.org regularly, but I probably wouldn't have any reason to visit the new Mozilla.org.

1st time poster =)
I didn't get a chance to read everything, but here's my input...

1. I like the new links up top that show downloads, support, etc. However, what is the difference between Downloads and Products? I didn't see much of a difference.
2. There needs to be a "Home" button (i think someone said this already) ... hmm just noticed if I click on the Mozilla logo in the top left corner, it takes me to the main page. It wouldn't hurt to put a Home/Main beside download though.
3. The support page is nice. I couldn't find the Mozdev site though :( I think the essential sites (texturizer, mozdev, and mozillazine) should be on the main page on the left. Also, there should be some sort of sign that says extensions here, try it out! You know? because many people don't know about the extensions, and we need to show them that that's what make Mozilla great. Also, is it just me or is the lizard/dino on the support page really goofy? I say take it out.
-Gabe

On the new website home page, the title is "mozilla - home of the mozilla, firebird, and camino web browsers", all in downcase. Wouldn't it be better with capital initial letters, at least in browser names ? For instance: "Mozilla - Home of the Mozilla, Firebird and Camino web browsers".

What's more, why stick to the browsers in the title ? Why not advertise the other programs (mail, IRC) as well ? Why use the "Firebird" name, which is not supposed to last long ? I think something like "Mozilla.org - Home of the Mozilla Internet Application Suite" would be better.

The site looks fine to me, because there is no way you can please everybody, but I would like to see a W3C validate site, for a browser group that is so eager to follow webstandards. See also: ". An advocate for standards on the Net and provide tools for developing web standards content"

" We are not the primary coders. Most of the code that goes into the distribution will be written elsewhere, both within the Netscape Client Engineering group, and, increasingly, out there on the net, at other companies and other development organizations."

I think the new website is a big step forward compared to the old one, except on two major issues:

- The lack of a well thoughtout information architecture
- The lack of communicating the information architecture to the user.

I feel that on the issues concerning information architecture, the new website represent no big improvement over the current website.

I'll try to give you some examples:

- It's hard to know exactly "where you are" in the information structure. For a user, it's very important to have an idea of "where you are" in an information structure [1].

Adding a location breadcrumb trail[2] could help solve this issue.

- Inconsistency between the top heading on a page and the
corresponding menu-option

When I click on "download" in the top menu i get to a page which says "Products" (in the left column) and "All Mozilla Products" in the main area of the page. The heading on this page should be "Download" as in the menu. Consistency between headings and menu-options are important to help the user keep track of where he is on the site.

- Its hard to know what function the left-hand menu has in relation to the page i'm visiting.

Sometimes the left-menu is just a "short version" of the same options for navigation presented in the page itself:
http://website-beta.mozilla.org/download.html

But sometimes its more like a fullsize menu and contain more options for navigation than within the page: http://website-beta.mozilla.org/developer/

An at other times its used to present links to other sites:
http://website-beta.mozilla.org/sitemap.html

I would suggest to drop the left-hand menu all together, and present the "context dependant" links within the context of the page [3,4]. Duplicating more or less the same navigation options in both the menu and inside the page like today is only confusing to the users.

The pages for the ill-conceived Mozilla Firebird product page redesign are mostly the way they were before. They are accessible through this link:

http://website-beta.mozilla.org/products/firebird/compare/

Specifically, the Downloads and Project Information pages need to fit the default theme for the beta site. The Take a Tour pages need to be redone to fit the new style, but only in the Why You Should Switch style (full-width text - crammed otherwise).

All in all, progress looks great! It'll be a nice change from the stodgy view in most pages, and it'll lend consistency that a front-page change (nice though it looked) ignored.